Why Tech Oligarchs Are Willing to Risk Apocalypse

In a series of private speeches last year, Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech investor and Silicon Valley thought leader, said that the young activist Greta Thunberg represented the spirit of the Antichrist. It was more than just a hyperbolic slur. Thiel was expressing a Promethean theology, one that sanctifies technology and expansion. In Thiel’s worldview, the forces of dynamism must struggle against the evils of stagnation, represented by Thunberg’s leftist environmentalism. “In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science,” said Thiel.

Thiel’s philosophical assumptions might sound bizarre to outsiders, but they appear to be widely shared among the tech elite. “A.I. and its capabilities represent something analogous to the Second Coming,” Jeremy Nixon, a founder of an A.I. hub called A.G.I. House, said in May. The technology, some tech titans believe, will allow humans — at least some humans — to escape the bounds of earth........

© The New York Times